It would probably cause a shoulder injury, or two.

And an awesome bit of nature.

Nice shot Mike, that's a new one for me. Is that where the wind disappeared.

My old man was out fishing one day ,and one came down 500 metre away from the boat ,he said the noise was deafening ...he said it seemed like it only hit the water for about a minute .the wind was howling .
he cut lines and took off.

he **** himself .

i guess you could sail around in circles without having to gybe .wouldn't that be cool ..

I have seen 4 in the last 30yrs offshore fishing SE QLD area. Oddly enough the wind in the area wasnt wild or erratic. Usually appears at leading edge of a small front.All ive seen have touched the water briefly, maybe 2-5min. They move quite slowly.Rate of travel slows further as they touch down and 'feed' from the water. Quite an awesome natural phenomenon to see.

Great shot, not easy to capture the moment.. Have seen similar off Tassy's cliffy SE coast once or twice and smaller swirls on the Derwent quite often when it blows 40+ knots. No plan to sail near them!

Heisenberg said..
I don't think these mini tornados are that uncommon on the west coast. It just doesn't normally hit land. However one did last month and wreaked quite abit of damage at Scarborough beach. I've seen at least two offshore in the last 12 months but good photo capture anyhow.

Thanks guys.
Talking to other locals who saw it earlier than us, they confirm my suspicion, that we missed the best of it. They say it started off opposite Avalon Point, and developed a full funnel all the way to the water, and finally faded after moving North to around Gearie's.

Had a look at Wikipedia, and they say it wasn't really a tornado, it has to develop from a supercell to be a tornado.
They normally develop in light winds under cumulus clouds, over water, don't last long and don't move very fast. And are more frequent in the tropics.

I think a lot go through at night and rip roofs off houses, but this was the first I've seen in the 25years we've been here.

Yep, seen a couple over many years. Really bizarre looking and would NOT want to be near the bottom end of the spout.